Financial News asked senior figures from the banks, venture capital companies and fintech start-ups: Which emerging fintech innovations will be the most disruptive to the financial services status quo?

• Big data

Cian Burke, head of HSBC Securities Services
We believe that big data technologies could have a bigger impact on our business than the internet. The ability to capture, process and analyse information at the same scale as Google is truly transformational. The next logical progression for our use of these technologies is to develop advanced predictive analytical capabilities. We want to anticipate client needs as events occur in the market.

Manu Gupta, general partner, tech investor Lakestar
Understanding and measuring risk will continue to be the most disruptive fintech innovation in the coming years. The number of markers available by which to measure creditworthiness has dramatically increased, leading to improved lending assessments – short and long term, large or small loans – and across the spectrum of use cases like housing, education, business or personal refinancing.

Sebastian Diemer, founder and chief executive, Kreditech
The most disruptive fintech innovation will tear apart traditional industry patterns while being beneficial for the masses. Big data credit scoring algorithms will serve to analyse the four billion people without credit scores worldwide. Banks are to fintech what shopping malls are to e-commerce. While the first is accessible to the elite in developed countries only, the second is accessible to everyone.

Usman Khan, co-founder and chief technology executive, fintech company Algomi
Evolutionary, rather than disruptive innovations, will spring up where buyers and sellers struggle to naturally discover each other. Algorithms that analyse bank data within their own data hubs, helping them to trade large ticket orders, or concepts pioneered by retail firms for “search and promotion”, will appear in the capital markets more frequently, something which has never been done before.

Claire Calmejane, head of Digital Centre of Excellence, Innovation and Partnerships, Lloyds Banking Group
The next disruption will come from data and insights and the ability for banks to transform their customer knowledge in a strategic advantage to better serve the customers and position themselves as provider of this service to other companies. The challenge will be to do so while maintaining trust and confidentiality.

• Cryptocurrencies and the technologies behind them

Fabian Vandenreydt
Head of markets management, Innotribe and the SWIFT Institute at SWIFT
Cryptocurrencies and next generation application program interfaces have the potential to transform the global financial infrastructure. Various protocol innovations underpinning crypto currencies offer new possibilities to automate transactions between players in the business-to-business space in a peer-to-peer fashion. Application program interfaces allow firms along the transaction processing value chain to expose their business services to partners and consumers in a more cost-effective and standardised way.

Pascal Bouvier, partner, Route 66 Ventures
Most disruptive to the financial services industry in the future is how crypto solutions, Bitcoin or other, applied to smart contract and smart technologies will revolutionise how assets are registered, exchanged, transacted and owned. Custodians, assets registries, exchanges, clearing and settlement service providers will have to take notice lest they will be disrupted fully.

Nektarios Liolios,managing director, Startupbootcamp FinTech
Cryptotechnology going mainstream for non-crypto transactions has huge potential to deeply transform financial services. Financial inclusion will also become an increasingly important theme in the coming years and a driver for payments innovation. I also expect asset management to be the next sector in line to be tackled by the innovators.

Charles Marston, CEO and chairman, software provider Calypso Technology
In the long term, blockchain technology will be the most disruptive. Blockchain technology enables Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. For the first time it allows an indisputable account of transactions (that is, accounting ledger or book of record) to be built without requiring the intermediation of a trusted third party.

• Peer-to-peer, crowdfunding and similar technologies

Bernd Richter, partner at Capco
We are seeing more fintech innovators entering the banking landscape in different arenas. Crowdfunding is becoming more popular in the retail and corporate sectors and peer-to-peer lending companies have done particularly well in the US, disrupting credit markets. Banks must work out how to share the market with these new entrants and lower costs to remain competitive.

• Organisational change

Jan Hammer, partner, Index Ventures
While many fintech start-ups are emerging across the board, I believe the most interesting ones will be those that fully rebuild existing banking infrastructure. I see most innovation in payments, with examples like Adyen fully rebuilding the whole vertical stack of payments gateway, processing and merchant acquiring or BitPay building payments acceptance software for Bitcoin on an open-source platform.

Eric Van Der Kleij, head, Level39, Canary Wharf Group
Most people would cite Blockchain and cyrptocurrency technologies – if not cryptocurrencies per se – as the most important innovation in financial services in the last 25 years. But it is the transparency and visibility of information made possible by digitally enabled finance that will empower consumers in a way that will challenge most of us, and inspire the innovators.

Rhomaios Ram, chief information officer of global transaction banking and co-head of group technology and operations product management, Deutsche Bank
Portal solutions are being developed to bundle services in one place and provide meaningful value-added capabilities to enhance client experience. These solutions offer robust security and allow horizontal services to be configured to better serve clients’ rapidly evolving market needs. Additionally, embracing a cloud environment can facilitate development of bundled client solutions.

Paula da Silva, head of working capital management, SEB
The biggest disruptions will come from innovations that aim to solve everyday problems for private individuals and corporates where the financial transaction is only a small part of the value chain.

Christian Nentwich, founder and chief executive, Duco
In the post-trade space, fintech has the potential to completely deconstruct firms as we know them today into outsourced, shared and interlinked commodity functions, eliminating vast inefficiency. The big challenge is not tech but process change, which is not yet accelerating.

Steve Grob, group strategy director, Fidessa
There are three key drivers for innovation – reducing cost, generating alpha and responding to regulation. Those firms that are genuinely rethinking and redeveloping processes (rather than just trying to do the same things more cheaply) will emerge the winners.

• Other thoughts

Philippe Gelis, CEO and co-founder, Kantox
The upcoming US IPO of peer-to-peer lending innovator Lending Club could be just the event needed to accelerate fintech in Europe. As the first fintech IPO, this will be a landmark event for the industry and prove to investors and customers alike that the space is indeed booming.

Mark Beeston, chief executive and founder, Illuminate Financial
We see two types of disrupting force: innovations that disrupt existing players and market models; and innovations that disrupt the operating models that support the businesses of the existing players. Silicon Valley services a lot of the former with new credit platforms such as peer-to-peer lending and digital payment huge areas of focus. Meanwhile New York and London drive the capital markets innovation focused largely on capital, compliance, cost and control.

Alastair Paterson, CEO, Digital Shadows
For years, many banks have got away with delivering poor, confusing customer experiences to both their business and personal customers combined with opaque pricing and questionable security. As barriers to entry disappear, there is a huge market opportunity for tech firms that can offer transparent services blending ease of use with robust security and privacy controls.

Michael McGovern, managing director and chief information officer, Brown Brothers Harriman
Winston Churchill said: “We must beware of needless innovation, especially when guided by logic.” Despite Churchill’s admonishment, the logic of the disruptive innovation created by the growth of mobile payments is compelling. How long before investors can buy financial products on iTunes or Amazon?

Chris Perretta, chief information officer, State Street
The emergence of secure public clouds and associated data infrastructure will lower some important barriers of entry to business as it is done today. Keys to success will be ubiquitous data access, enhanced user experience, expert analytics, and fully digitised subject matter expertise, which drive smart operations in real time. All fuelled by limitless computer power.

Carole Berndt, head of global transaction services, RBS
Clients, connectivity and collaboration: three factors that will determine the success of a fintech innovation. Does it deliver for clients as well as us as banking providers? Does it enable the industry to work more efficiently? Tech developments simplifying correspondent banking are beginning to show they can achieve this, but this will really only succeed through more collaboration.